It doesn’t seem like all that long ago, but it’s been half a month since we had a good condemn. Although there’s been a bit of condemnation about the Lympics. So it must be time again to condemn. Here’s a twenty fourth open condemnation thread. What’s getting up your goat this month so far? Which evil political, cultural, social, musical, religious and other phenomena need condemnation? (Or loud denunciation?)
You can condemn anything you like except La Femme Nikita. Well, you can condemn Michael. But not Nikita, Edward Woodward or Coldplay tracks.
One of the things that has given me the $hit$ watching Channel 7s coverage of the Olympics is the adjusted medal count; this thrown up when the “real” medal count doesn’t appear to meet early morning breakfast expectations. In Mel and Kochy’s world we’re always number one if you massage the figures the right way.
Truth be told I don’t like any medal count by nation; aren’t the Olympics supposed to be about singular human athletic achievement? By that measurement Michael Phelps is absolute number one and at this point he matches Australia in gold medal achievement. Maybe that should make 7’s adjusted list, an asterix or footnote would help their simplistic exercise.
Just to prick the early morning in studio Green and Gold flag waving jingoistic bubble for a moment, are we ever number one on any adjusted list?
In a recent post More Intelligent Life asked the medal count question and showed us at number two in Athens, second to the Bahamas. And then there is this site whose approach to the tally currently throws up Jamaica as the top dog. Pass the dutchy!
What about medals based on the money spent on sport science, or GDP, or the number of beaches added to grains of sand multiplied by days of sunlight? Or the number of former gold medal winners who failed to take gold this time around? On the latter metric I think we really are number one.
USA’s Sada Jacobson (R) competes against France’s Leonore Perrus during the women’s team sabre bronze medal match France vs. USA on August 14, 2008 at the Fencing Hall of National Convention center, as part of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. (JEWEL SAMAD/AFP/Getty Images)
We’ve been discussing the astonishingly sexualised uniforms for female athletes over at Hoyden About Town, as have many other blogs. As Lauredhel said:
No. It’s not about faster, higher, stronger. Women in sports are promoted as sexualised bodies for ogling; men are promoted as performers.
This is also something I’ve posted about before, showing how track uniforms were virtually identical for men and women in the 80s compared to the enormous disparities now.
I noticed yesterday that Griffith Uni has provided a plasma screen in the library window for students and staff to watch the Olympics, but when I questioned both my Griffith students and later on my ACU students, most said they were too busy with things like paid work, study and parental responsibilities to be following the Olympics closely. That’s obviously an unscientific sample, but it does (I think) go to show that not everyone immerses themselves in the Olympics coverage. I don’t necessarily object to a bit of it - I had some fun watching some of the Sydney Olympics on a trip to Melbourne (as you do!), but I’m too busy to pay any attention this time around - because of paid work and study (looming deadline for second draft of PhD thesis). I did notice that Stephanie Rice had won another gold medal, but I think only because she’d been the subject of discussion here around privacy issues.
But I imagine that consulting ratings figures would demonstrate that a lot of people do watch a lot of the Olympics, and that criticism of Yahoo!7’s online coverage probably implies that some people want to watch some from the office. In that vein, it was interesting to see an article in the Fin last week about various large organisations more or less agreeing with Bob Hawke and his comments on the Americas Cup - that “anyone who sacks an employee for checking results on the intertubes or for taking a sickie after staying up late during the Olympics is a mug”. Managers of various companies were quoted saying they didn’t have a problem with employees looking at online coverage provided they managed their own workload. That raises the broader question of policing internet access at work. My view on that is that if someone spends all day looking at websites, there’s probably either a problem with workflow or they’re not a terribly motivated employee after all. My feeling is that most employees exercise a fair degree of self-discipline in achieving work goals, and that’s backed up by a lot of studies of working from home. One anecdote I have is of the Queensland Public Service in 2000, when I was doing a consultancy in house for a few weeks. One day I was in the office was the American presidential election - and I suppose because a lot of public servants are political junkies, a whole open office was full of people hitting refresh on CNN. Most of these people were doing project or research work, and not required to do customer service as such, and I didn’t hear that any deadlines had been missed - folks were just making up the time later, or building that desire to obsess over election results into their work planning.
There was some interesting discussion here at LP recently on this thread about the right to free speech, which I think took far too narrowly American and thus falsely universal a view. In the common law tradition of Britain and Australia and comparable countries, there hasn’t historically been a legal right to free speech (except in Parliament!). Though that’s changed to some degree here, and in Britain because of the importation of civil law jurisprudence via the European Union, it has always been the case that protection from intrusion and protection of reputation have been significant barriers to press “freedom”. Defamation law, however, is a blunt instrument when it comes to protecting privacy, and the Australian Law Reform Commission has released a report suggesting higher barriers for media intrusion into people’s private lives. The report can be found here and the salient recommendations are covered in this story.
The Right to Know Coalition - an organisation of Australian media companies - vigorously opposes any new legal protections for privacy.
In an op/ed pushing this barrow in The Australian, UQ’s Garrick Professor of Law James Allan makes the case against, predictably roping in the general conservative suspicion of any measure that might resemble a bill of rights. He concentrates on a recent UK case which turned on a right to privacy, brought by motor racing boss Max Mosley. Mosley’s adventures with sex workers and domination scenarios in a basement were reported by a British tabloid, and the story had all sorts of salacious elements - including the fact that Mosley’s famous father Sir Oswald was a home-grown British Fascist. But the court found that there was no public interest in revealing all this, and indeed it’s hard really to see what that public interest might be. The suggestion from the media crew is that “ordinary people” don’t have to worry about such intrusions into their private lives. But is that so?
We’ll be seeing plenty of China on our TV screens in the next little while, as long they don’t give us too many long shots. No matter how spectacular the Olympic opening ceremony, if we can see it, I think the abiding image from the Games for me will be the astonishing soup of pollution. I can’t wrap my mind around the kind of hubris and single-minded neglect that could produce such a mess. Rick Birch talking on local radio said the Chinese Government had assured everyone a couple of years ago that the weather would be fine for the opening ceremony, the weather apparently being subject to government will. Hence no need for a plan B in case it rains. Rick says you always have a plan B in case it rains, but not this time.
And it’s going to be “gold, gold to Australia, gold” quite a lot at the Beijing Games, if the predictions of US sports magazine (and annual cheesecake purveyor) Sports Illustrated hold up. They’re predicting 22 gold medals for Australia, five more than Athens, and a couple more than the Australian Olympic Committee’s estimates.
As well as the usual gaggle of swimmers, the magazine is pencilling in gold medals in the women’s triathalon for Emma Snowsill, shooters Warren Potent (I’m sure the headline writers are already preparing for that one) and Michael Diamond, a trio of sailing events, and the men’s pairs rowing.
I know I’ll be hanging on every tacking duel, as the smog-blurred images of 470-class dinghies cut their way through the algae-ridden sludge at the Qingdao Olympic Sailing Center, yelling at the screen. Of course, what I’ll be yelling is “get this crap off the television and show me the hockey tournament, you twits!” I may actually start throwing things at the screen after the second replay of Grant Hackett’s 1500 meter heat…
What are your predictions for these Olympics?
Larvatus Prodeo is an Australian group blog which discusses politics, sociology, culture, life, religion and science from a left of centre perspective. more»
There was some interesting discussion here at LP recently 
Recent comments
Fine, Ambigulous, dylwah, murph the surf, wizofaus, David Rubie [...]
Adrien, Ambigulous, Adrien, Liam, Mark, Liam [...]
David Rubie, Paul Burns, Brian, David Irving (no relation), kymbos, kymbos [...]
Adrien, Katz, Paul Burns, Kingsley, Mark, Liam [...]
Paul Burns, David Rubie, Mark, Brian, Paul Burns, Baraholka [...]
Adrien, Legal Eagle, Michael Sutcliffe, Mark, Tyro Rex, Adrien [...]
jrbarch, Mindy, Mark, Mark, Leon, Derek [...]
Mindy, Admin!!! HELP!!!, FDB, David Rubie, FDB, David Rubie [...]
Ambigulous, suz, Colin, un ami des beaux arts, adrian, suz [...]
Bilko, Paul Burns, Dave Bath, Bilko, Nabakov, Adrien [...]
RobWindt, Pappinbarra Fox, Ai! Que Dolor!, Patrick B, peter jones, Paul Burns [...]
Mark, Adrien, Adrien, Kim, Adrien, smiley [...]